The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#2How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on.
E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!".
Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything exciting on 2.12 roadmap.
It looks like Scala compiler is very complex machinery, few key people left: http://www.slideshare.net/extempore/keynote-pnw-scala-2013 and Typesafe doesn't monetize compiler itself, so it focus on building ecosystem around it (e.g. Akka).
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#3How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
> How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit
It is. Odersky is spending most of his time on Dotty these days and he doesn't seem that interested in Scala any more, except when he's obligated to talk about it at keynotes (and he tends to talk more about Dotty there anyway). Despite the grandiose plans of possibly back porting Dotty features to Scala at some point in the distant future, Scala has been in maintenance mode for a couple of years now and with more and more people leaving the core team, it's probably going to stay this way.
Such a missed opportunity.
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#4How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
A lot of work in 2.11 has gone in stabilizing the compiler (aka bug fixing) and the backend (the JVM bytecode generator). Unfortunately this is not very visible work, but it had to be done to maintain compatibility with Java 8 lambdas.
As for the new things, they are mainly library-based and compiler plugins, so the scalac compiler remains stable, and new features are self-supporting. Some examples:
* Scala.js (http://www.scala-js.org/)
* Scala.meta (https://github.com/scalameta/scalameta)
* Pickers and spores (https://speakerdeck.com/heathermiller/on-pickles-and-spores-...)
* Scala offheap (https://github.com/densh/scala-offheap)
* RRBVector (https://github.com/nicolasstucki/scala-rrb-vector)
* ScalaBlitz (https://scala-blitz.github.io/)
* Miniboxing (http://scala-miniboxing.org)
Also, I should mention the theoretical work on the DOT type system, which is a sound and more expressive type system to be used for the Scala programming language (compatible with the old type system, as it's more expressive, but also sound -- disallowing any incorrect code).
Regarding Typesafe, they took over releases and maintenance, and did a good job at that. Yet Martin Odersky himself and his team at EPFL are the main drivers for innovation, including dotty and all the projects listed above (which were all developed at EPFL, see http://lamp.epfl.ch).
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#5How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
> How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit It is. Odersky is spending most of his time on Dotty these days and he doesn't seem that interested in Scala any more, except when he's obligated to talk about it at keynotes (and he tends to talk more about Dotty there anyway). Despite the grandiose plans of possibly back porting Dotty features to Scala at some point in the distant future, Scala has…
Please see the comment above: even though the main compiler is in maintenance and stabilization mode, innovation has happened in Scala in the form of independent projects, driven by people in Martin Odersky's lab.
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#6How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
Scala is a complicated language. I would see it as a good thing if new features are rarely added.
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#7How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
My understanding is that Dotty is the next generation of the Scala compiler. See the Scala roadmap for the details: http://www.scala-lang.org/news/roadmap-next. Basically, it's the culmination of research showing that the language's feature set can actually be expressed in a smaller number of primitives than previously thought. A lot of features that are distinct today will become syntactic sugar for more general underlying representations. I think the expectation is that this will actually make the compiler more agile going forward,and let the maintainers cut out some of its gnarliest corners.
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#8How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
Well, the official compiler is going to be replaced by Dotty eventually, so you could say that this is actually work on a far-out beta of an eventual version of the official Scala compiler.
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#9How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
My understanding is that Dotty is the next generation of the Scala compiler. See the Scala roadmap for the details: http://www.scala-lang.org/news/roadmap-next . Basically, it's the culmination of research showing that the language's feature set can actually be expressed in a smaller number of primitives than previously thought. A lot of features that are distinct today will become syntactic sugar for more general un…
That is my understanding as well. That it will be Scala "Don Giovanni", which I believe will be Scala 2.14, or maybe they will bump it to 3.0 at that point.
Re: The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
#10How about the official Scala compiler? It seems to stagnant a bit... I know there is a lot of work behind the scene, but from developer perspective there aren't many things going on. E.g. Scala 2.10 Introduced a lot of interesting features like string formatting s"Hello $name!". Scala 2.11 offered minimal improvements, for me just compilation time improvements and better incremental compilation. I don't see anything…
A lot of work in 2.11 has gone in stabilizing the compiler (aka bug fixing) and the backend (the JVM bytecode generator). Unfortunately this is not very visible work, but it had to be done to maintain compatibility with Java 8 lambdas. As for the new things, they are mainly library-based and compiler plugins, so the scalac compiler remains stable, and new features are self-supporting. Some examples: * Scala.js ( http…
I was really excited to read about offheap, but I'm disappointed that you make sacrifices in memory safety by using it.
I'm so excited by Rust's memory management, but Scala just have so many nice features, especially in multithreading. I hope Rust will catch up, eventually.